Doctors Without Borders’ Workers Trade Medication for Sex in Africa

DailyMail/

Aid workers with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) regularly used prostitutes while working in Africa and boasted they could sell medication for sex, whistleblowers have revealed.

The allegations have been made against support staff rather than doctors or nurses at MSF, which is also known as Doctors Without Borders.

One MSF former employee, who worked with HIV patients in central Africa, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme, the use of local sex workers was “widespread”.

“There was an older colleague who actually moved a woman into the compound. It was pretty obvious she was a prostitute but he called her his girlfriend and she would spend night after night with him. This kind of thing was so blatant. (It was) so blatant and widespread.

“I saw one of my colleagues; he was a much younger guy, go into the toilet with a local prostitute. I knew her to talk to as she also worked in one of the bars. She told me afterwards that they’d had sex and he’d paid her,” she said.

The whistleblower said she also felt sexually harassed by some of the men she worked with and one colleague “really made my life miserable”.

“The worst bit came when I left for a few weeks and came back to my room and found used condoms that he told people he’s deliberately left behind. I felt sick.”

Another worker said it was felt the use of prostitutes “was a regular occurrence”.

“I felt that, with some of the older guys, there was definitely an abuse of power,” she said.

“They’d been there for a long time and took advantage of their exalted status as a Western aid worker. There’s definitely a feeling that certain predatory men were seen as too big to fail.

“You would often see men who were older, middle-aged, partying with much younger local girls. It was sexualised.”

A third whistleblower told the BBC a senior colleague boasted that it was possible to barter medication for sex.

“He said, ‘oh, it’s so easy to barter medication with these easy girls in Liberia’,” the woman claimed.

“He was suggesting lots of the young girls who had lost their parents to the Ebola crisis would do anything sexual in exchange for medication.”

The BBC said it had not been possible to verify this allegation.

An MSF spokesman said it was “deeply saddened” that the people making the allegations were unable to use its reporting mechanisms to make a complaint.

“We do not tolerate abuse, harassment or exploitation within MSF. We are sorry for any instances where people have been subjected to harassment, abuse or otherwise mistreated and/or felt that it was not adequately dealt with.

“We know that MSF is not immune to these issues and we take any reports seriously. We have mechanisms in place to prevent, detect and address staff misconduct.

“We have looked into the claims put to us by the BBC as far as we are able, but the lack of detail provided has made this difficult. Based on the information provided, we have been unable to confirm the specific allegations made in the BBC report.

“We would urge anyone with any concerns to report them via MSF’s confidential whistleblowing mechanisms so that we can take action. We have sanctioned people for misconduct, including dismissal,” he said.

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